stopsign002

Had 4G service on I94 between State rd and Saline Ann Arbor. Didnt have time to stop and map it, but I did get a speed test at around 5.2 mpbs down and 2.3 up while going 75 mph. Very exciting! I may or may not have freaked out when I saw the 4G icon next to my bars

Nice! I went up there the other day but as soon as it connected to 4G it booted me down to 3G

I've noticed the purple keeps creeping out farther from Howell. Is that still the same towers and people are just getting readings farther away? Or is it spread to Brighton lol

For sure. That would be awesome. Honestly lately my 3g speeds have been decent enough but to have lte would be awesome!

Meh, nvm. I think it was just my phone

Not sure if its just me or what, but since around 4 pm today in A2 I haven't had data at all. Could be my phone but I've never had this happen before...

 

 

Boooo. You know what color goes good with purple? Green!

Lol let's go BLUUEEE!!!

Yeah this is all very exciting. Cant wait to start seeing some purple in A2!

Howell is about 30 minutes from me and I've been looking for an excuse to go on a nice cruise in the LS. Might have to go check it out if we can get a location

I'm not sure what happened but my 3g speeds have gone from averaging 150kbps to 1.5mbps in my little town just south of Ann Arbor (Saline for those of you that know the area). Whether they are doing NV or not I don't know, but they clearly did something and I'm a content customer again

They do, however, some phones just refuse to connect properly, and some with ease.

Whats the news on the Galaxy Nexus? Is it playing nice with LTE? (though I suppose I am running ROMs so that could effect that)

How often do our phones natively look for 4g? I mean, they must check every now and then right?

I agree. Latency may be just as, if not more important than throughput for "light" data activities. But I am not sure that the VZW-Sprint comparison is relevant.

 

AJ

I agree. I was typing faster than I was thinking. That was a bad example

I rest my case...

 

AJ

Lol

Yes, I think that I was very clear in my previous post. Do you have any stats to show that VZW somehow has generally lower latency than does Sprint?

 

AJ

Sorry for clarifying....

No, that was a bad way to make my point, sorry about that. What I should have said was this;

If someone is loading a little bit of information from the internet (like people do with facebook all the time) on a lower bandwidth (as long as it isn't too low) lower latency connection compared to a higher bandwidth higher latency connection, the phone with the 'slower' connection is going to appear faster to the average user.

Heres an example of the a study that says checking the weather is the number one thing people do on their smartphone (http://www.huffingto..._n_1818632.html). If they are updating a moving weather map or something of the sort that might take a bit of data, but if they are just refreshing some weather stats do you really think the higher bandwidth comes into play (if lets say we have a 700kbps/60ms compared to 20mbps/200ms)?

I would argue 6 of those top 'things people do on their smartphones' aren't very data intensive and dont need a high bandwidth connection, meaning latency would probably be more helpful in making the phone appear to be faster. Many things people do on their phones are small data things, not large data things (though watching video is number two on that list)

I would like to see some documentation. Do you have any stats to corroborate this assertion?

 

AJ

What? That Verizon has lower latency than Sprint?

Just low latency? Think of it this way, if we take a generally low latency connection, say a cable modem, and set the defined speed caps in the modem to that of dial up (56k)..how well will netflix or even facebook work on a low latency connection then? Despite the low latency, they would certainly not appear fast given how these services are developed for "high" bandwidth throughput.

Of course, which is why I said in my earlier post that as long as there is an acceptable bandwidth latency becomes much more important. Do you really believe most people need 4G to check facebook or email? Absolutely not. 4G is total overkill for most things people do on their phones. With a stable (low latency/packloss/not overloaded like sprints network) 3G connection people can do basically all of what they need/want and its fine. I would argue that the average user would say a low latency 3G connection (2mbps) is 'faster' than a high latency 4G connection (20mbps) in just about everything but netflix/download a big file. Latency is what the average public (besides us sprint users and our bogged network) sees as 'slow' connection speeds. Once you have more than 1.5mbps the average user isnt going to notice increased bandwidth, they are going to notice latency. I agree that they will notice with netflix though

Right. All of which are not latency critical apps. Voice over IP depends on latency to operate satisfactorily. Online gaming (Xbox, etc) depends heavily on latency. Streaming netflix does not. it will run without issue as long as throughput is high enough..roughly 2 MBits for a standard def video. Which will work fine on a satellite connection like wild blue or hughesnet.

Ok, I guess we wont call them latency 'critical', but to make these apps appear fast, which is critical to the customer, you will need a low latency.

Are you running "ping" tests all day long on your phone? Care to tell us what users are doing 99% of the time on there phone where it is latency sensitive? Also, your analogy is very poor.

Do you run speed tests all day long on your phone? I would guess not. The typical user is using their phone for Facebook, Email, light browsing, and some stream video (not counting gaming which generally doesnt need internet access).

I'm not really sure what you dont understand about my post so I'm not sure how to answer. If you asking for how a bad latency effects users I can explain that, but I'm not sure. Just about anything you do on your phone is latency sensitive. Why do people say their phones are 'faster' on Verizon? Because the latency is lower so when you open a app everything appears much quicker, or when you go to a website it loads faster initially. Not to mention any sort of video chat which is EXTREMELY latency sensitive and is becoming very popular. Phones appear to be faster when the latency is lower because whatever it is they are doing starts loading much faster. People want their devices to be very fast as they move through webpages/facebook pressing links and going from page to page. Latency is going to effect how fast that phone appears to be much more than bandwidth (unless your bandwidth is EXTREMELY bad, like under 250kbps bad like some of us are experiencing). You can stream netflix HD no problem with 700kbps and a low latency. I know, I do it at work (where I have checked the network speeds to see whats going on). But if my latency goes up then its game over. Its more important to have the packets moving back and forth faster after you reach a certain bandwidth (unless we are just downloading big files, which normal users do not do).

I dont know how much you know but this is a good article explaining what I'm talking about; http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=9566

I always offload. Why? Because ping is basically always better on a wifi network then on a cellular one. If you know anything about how the internet works, you know that ping really is the most important factor to having a good satisfying wireless connection. If you don't believe me find someone who has satellite internet. Yeah, they get 2-3 mbps, but the ping is over a second. Regardless of if it is socially responsible or not, the better ping wins out for 99% of what a user is doing on a smart phone. I literally just leave my wifi on so when I get to the various places I go it automatically connects. Almost every place I spend lots of time (school, work, home) has wifi so why not go for the better ping? Lets put it this way. Guy has a car with 1000 horsepower but his transmission takes a full 2 seconds to shift. Hes gonna lose to my Lincoln LS with 300 horses because of my faster transmission. Pings can be a huge bottleneck.

PS I have a degree in computer networking and am working on another one in computer information systems.

I just took a look at the Michigan NV sites map in the sponsor area and there are a lot more than 3 for Ann Harbor.

 

Sorry I can't give more detail. Its may be worth chipping in a few bucks to become a sponsor, you get access to all the good stuff for 6 months. I know I spend way too much time looking over all the maps etc.

Oh, interesting. Ill have to check that out

I think Robert has said something like 20% more range but also that there are so many variables you can't really give any straight answer. Sprint has over 38,000 sites and all but maybe 100 are getting a NV upgrade. Odd yours aren't. Robert will likely improve/correct my post in a minute or two. That guy is everywhere.

Well I'm comparing the open signal maps website to sprints website, and my knowledge of how cell networks work is limited. Do they use repeaters to get the signal from the phone back to a main boomer tower or something? Cause if so then what I am seeing could be just fine. I'm just a little confused with the information I have found so far

Not something I'm tracking. But I believe there are 14,000 WiMax sites if memory serves. And 2,477 LTE sites as of this moment. But WiMax spacing is much tighter than Sprint LTE. So this really doesn't mean much to try to compare head to head. 14,000 LTE sites will have much more coverage than 14,000 WiMax sites.

 

Robert

Do you know about how much range a single LTE site has? I know it varies based on terrain and such, but Ann Arbor has only 3 or so sites on the sprint website that are slated for upgrades, but there are a lot more towers than that in Ann Arbor...